The bioethics council operated out of the basement of a Georgian townhouse in Bloomsbury’s Bedford Square, a pretty oval garden popular at night with methadone addicts whose discarded syringes were a regular feature of my walk to work.

— Asymmetry, p. 179

Self’s impression of Bedford Square (which she knows very, very well) is quite different. She hasn’t seen a single syringe.

Here’s the view from her room on Bedford Place, which overlooks the Duke of Bedford’s private garden.

She has to pass Bedford Square every time she goes to the British Museum or the London Review Bookshop.

We subleased a studio on Broadway and spent eight weeks doing very little other than exactly what we wanted to do, which is to say a lot of drinking coffee, eating waffles, taking long walks around the reservoir up and down Riverside Park and reading magazines cover to cover in the bath.